Friday, March 10, 2017

The risks of institutional monocropping

Many articles and books point out the failure of institutional transplants from one country to another. Institutions must be complementary from each other, and fit with the social norms and the cultural endowment of a society. There is now almost unanimity that the so-called "Washington consensus" failed to deliver in Latin America and Africa because it tried to promote institutions that were at odds with local practices and local political equilibria. Instead, may countries in East Asia, including China and India, have grown successfully with very different institutions, different from those promoted by the Washington consensus and different among themselves. China is very different from India, and India is very different from South Korea. But all of them have grown spectacularly. Of course they face challenges, and their institutions will keep evolving, but surely they will do so in unexpected and unpredictable ways. In Europe we have learned that the institutional monocropping of the nation-state is basically dead, and we have been experimenting with other institutional solutions for some decades now. This experimental process is likely to continue in the foreseeable future. This supposedly dangerous 2017 will see events happening, but most probably the European Union as a conglomerate of institutions at different speeds will survive, learn from its mistakes and keep evolving. Institutional diversity is friendly with modular hybrids and solutions that defy definitions. Perhaps if we approached problems in regions like Africa or the Middle East with a mentality that stops practicing the institutional monocropping of the nation-state we would find solutions that have been eluding us for the last 50 years.